Help using DAW beat box/drum machine!

  • Thread starter Thread starter rockabilly1955
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rockabilly1955

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not sure if this would be the right forum, but here it goes. I wanna add drums to my songs. My DAW has some beat box/drum machines on it. I have tried several times to try to program a beat to match my songs, but to no avail. And i also am trying to make it as real as possible, you know, not sounding like some kareoke drum track. Any advice on doing this? Are there any tutorials out there that really explain this stuff?? thanks! :)
 
The secret to 'adding drums' is to play to the drum track in the first place.

It's almost impossible to accurately chart a tempo map of a song that's not played to a drum track or at least a metronome unless the musicians are very good.

You don't say which DAW you have, but I remember you posting about a Zoom --- or was it a Boss? Anyway, if the drum machine built in has velocity sensitive pads, altering the velocity of the individual drum hits is always a good place to start to make your drum part sound less robotic. I doubt that your drum machine has this capability, but harder strikes are usually higher in pitch --- just slightly --- than softer ones.

Get a drum track you like together first, then play to it. If the DAW is flexible enough you won't need to worry about putting the rolls and fills in the right places until after the other instruments have been recorded.


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Thanks for the info ssscientist. This is actually my first post about using midi/daw drums. I use Magix Music Studio 11. The beat box it has is a big square grid thing with a bunch of little squares that you fill in with the drum sound of choice. You start filling in the "little squares" with your mouse cursor. It kinda throws me off because the default speed is 120 bpm and then that makes it tricky to adjust the tempo and make it sound like i want it to sound. So you say the best way to do it is to make the main drum beat and then go back and create the fills i want and add them in the track and overwrite the main drum beat just for the length of the fills? i tried attaching a pic of the screenshot but it was too big and if i shrink it, you wont be able to see anything to help you
 
if the track was not recorded against a metronome then you will have a field day trying to sync it up. If you do manage to figure out the tempo (and the drummer is good) his 1/4 notes should roughly fall on the timing grid of the sequencer and then you can simply overlay the midi drum track.

If the overall timing is all over the place, then your pretty much left with quantizing the song bar by bar and it would be faster to rerecord the whole thing.

This is why you ALWAYS have some kind of solid sync reference to play along with, going backwards is a waste of time and the results are poor
 
our music doesnt use drums. We use an upright bass as our rhythm/percussion. 1950's style. You know, we never have used a metronome. Im a newbie at that. I've messed with one before, but it kinda throws me off cuz i tend to "play along" with the little click rhythm, which is not what i am trying to do :D So using a metronome would make the drum programming much easier??
 
rockabilly1955 said:
because the default speed is 120 bpm
Click to expand...
That's the plain vanilla default tempo you'll find in almost every program.

Setting the right tempo is absolutely crucial to getting something that's comfortable to play along with. It's becoming increasingly common for software as well as hardware to have some kind of 'Tap Tempo' feature, and it's very important that you get used to using this. When you're working on a slower song 5 bpm either way is enough to throw you off, and that's the last thing you want.

Setting a proper initial tempo is the first step to a good drum part.


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thanks to all the tips i've gotten here, i am now on my way to nailing down that drum track for one of my songs. I have been able to create the main part along with the little interlude middle part, as our part time drummer would play when we play live little sessions. It is coming out pretty well, i think i'll need to speed it up a bit, but i tested my guitar parts to it and it is fitting nicely. Now i'll see how it comes out with vocals and the upright bass thrown on it as well. Thanks guys :)
 
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